THE MONTH IN A MINUTE

The gay com­mu­nity has not been rep­re­sented what­so­ever. I’m gay, so I can tell you that I would long for that. We are de­ter­mined to have ev­ery­one rep­re­sented in our films in some way, at some point in time.” – Marvel Cine­matic Uni­verse exec Victoria Alonso says she fore­sees LGBT+ su­per­heroes in the Marvel films in the fu­ture.

NOT ON TREND

The Pope states that even though “ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity is fash­ion­able”, there is “no room” for it in the lives of Catholic priests and nuns, call­ing it a “wor­ry­ing, se­ri­ous mat­ter”. He was re­spond­ing to calls for a more in­clu­sive church from LGBT+ ac­tivists.

HEAD GIRL

A Bri­tish school pub­licly sup­ports its head­mas­ter af­ter it’s re­vealed he has a sec­ond job as a drag queen. The own­ers of the school in south-east Eng­land say An­drew Liv­ing­stone’s Miss Tish Ewe char­ac­ter, who uses saucy lan­guage in her shows, is “not in­com­pat­i­ble” with his du­ties.

RAIN­BOW BEY­ONCÉ:

US su­per­star Bey­oncé brings LGBT+ pride to South Africa’s Global Cit­i­zen Fes­ti­val by dress­ing her­self and back­ing dancers in the colours of the rain­bow. The singer’s head­line per­for­mance sparks a Twit­ter rush of Pride emo­jis.

GET IT STRAIGHT

Pop star Shawn Men­des (above) says he’s tired of “per­sis­tent ru­mours” about him be­ing gay. The 20-year-old says he feels the need to “prove” he’s straight by be­ing seen dat­ing women. LGBT+ ac­tivists call for an end to con­stant spec­u­la­tion about fa­mous men’s sex­u­al­ity, say­ing it can fuel ho­mo­pho­bia.

GET TESTED

Aus­tralia ap­proves HIV self-test­ing kits that give re­sults in 15 min­utes. The Atomo Diagnostics fin­ger prick test pack­age is seen as an­other vi­tal tool in HIV preven­tion. It is due to be avail­able on­line within in a few months.

WE DO

New stats re­veal 3,149 Aus­tralian same-sex cou­ples mar­ried in the first six months of 2018. New South Wales saw the most cer­e­monies. The av­er­age age of women get­ting mar­ried was 39, and 48 for men.

PRIDE RUS­SIA

The Euro­pean Court Of Hu­man Rights rules that Rus­sia must stop ban­ning LGBT+ events, in­clud­ing Pride parades. Rus­sian ac­tivists ap­pealed to the court to in­ter­vene, cit­ing their rights to free­dom of peace­ful assem­bly. Whether Rus­sia will take any no­tice of the rul­ing re­mains to be seen.